


Object Permanence

by forrainingdays



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Bobby | Trevor Wilson-centric, all other characters listed are just mentioned, this is me dealing with trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29773344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forrainingdays/pseuds/forrainingdays
Summary: It was times like that Bobby was almost, in a sick way, grateful for his absolute lack of object permanence. If he just never again stepped foot into the garage, maybe he could pretend it was all a bad dream. And with that, he hoped if he waited long enough, one day he would have the courage to go back to the spaces once occupied by the boys, loud with music and laughter, and they'd be there, asking him why he was late to practice this time. He'd lie and say he was with some girl and not that he just woke up from the most brutal nightmare. In another world, the boys would tease him for a moment as he laughed along, but as much as the sick part of him wanted to believe that would happen, he knew better.
Kudos: 8





	Object Permanence

It was times like that Bobby was almost, in a sick way, grateful for his absolute lack of object permanence. If he just never again stepped foot into the garage, maybe he could pretend it was all a bad dream. And with that, he hoped if he waited long enough, one day he would have the courage to go back to the spaces once occupied by the boys, loud with music and laughter, and they'd be there, asking him why he was late to practice this time. He'd lie and say he was with some girl and not that he just woke up from the most brutal nightmare. In another world, the boys would tease him for a moment as he laughed along, but as much as the sick part of him wanted to believe that would happen, he knew better.

Recounting that night was painful, but involuntary. At first, Bobby had ignored the sirens coming from the street, it was the third set of sirens he had heard since the band got to the Orpheum. But as the performance grew closer, and the boys still hadn't shown up, he grew worried. A sick feeling tugged at his stomach as he realised: the sirens could be for one of them. Luke was a runaway, after all, Bobby had even seen a missing person poster in the Orpheum. Maybe Alex’s parents finally realised he wasn’t coming home, and actually tried to get him back. Maybe a family member finally decided to ask where Reggie was, because his parents surely didn’t know. Whatever the circumstances were, he found his legs dragging him up the stairs from the dressing room and to the street. He stopped dead in his tracks, however, when he saw the first glance of the ambulance. The doors were opened, and he could have sworn he saw a glimpse of Luke’s blue sweater, but he didn’t have time to think about that because one of the EMTs was talking to him, telling him something about the boys but the words didn’t make sense.

“-their parents’ phone numbers?” was all Bobby heard of the EMT’s spiel, but it was enough to at least make it seem like he knew what was being said when he gave a small nod. And then he saw them. The lifeless boys. 

He blinked and suddenly he was in the VIP section of the Orpheum, trying not to stare up at the stage he was supposed to be rocking in just 15 minutes. A pen was placed in front of him, and he was being expected to write down the numbers of the boys’ parents, but he couldn’t even think straight. He was pretty sure people were trying to talk to him or ask him questions, or something, but he was already struggling to write the phone numbers, he couldn’t answer a single question out loud. His only thought was-

“Where are they!?” The first words Bobby had said since he got pulled back down the stairs after seeing Luke being put in the ambulance. And it was like the floodgates broke. He heard everything after that, all the voices in the venue overlapping and echoing in his brain. But all he could do was run, past everyone trying to stop him, past the yellow tape blocking off the couch. To the street where he could only hear the faint wail of the sirens retreating.

Just as quickly as he gained clarity, he felt like cotton balls were stuffed into his head again, and everything moved too fast and too slow and nothing felt right. Once again, he couldn’t tell you a thing that was going on around him. He thought he felt his knees hit the concrete, he thought he felt some weight draped over his shoulder, he thought he heard the voice of the waitress he had been flirting with earlier that night. Arms wrapped underneath him to pull him up gently from the sidewalk, and guided him back to the Orpheum. To his own surprise, he actually made it down the stairs (deeply assisted, but he didn’t fall), down to a phone. They expected him to call someone; he assumed they expected him to call his parents. So he did. He dialed in the phone number, relying on nothing but muscle memory to do it.

“The Wilson’s” Bobby’s mom spoke through the phone, and an officer (maybe?) took the job of answering.

The words seemed to swim around in Bobby’s head, but he was finally getting a comprehension of what was going on. “Your son is okay,” the officer said, “but his bandmates died this evening.” A strangled cry came from the other end of the phone. “They had gotten hotdogs at a local vendor, and unfortunately, food poisoning got the best of them.” 

After the call, everyone found it best to leave Bobby alone, it wasn’t like he would talk anyways, and Bobby didn’t notice one way or another. Before he could really process the phone call (how could the officer keep such a straight face when telling that to his mom?) he was back in his room. The only clarity he had on the ride back between the tears and the cotton was a brief thought: younger Bobby would have loved this, a thought that came to him not in reference to the situation but in reference to sitting in the front seat of a police car. 

When he got back to his room, he knew his boys were gone. All three of their families were out of the picture at the time, he had to identify the bodies. He saw them there, in the alley off of sunset boulevard, looking cold, and warm, and the exact same as before, except for something in the eyes and the blood that had dried around the mouth. They were gone. And no lack of object permanence would make that change.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, this is something I started in a friend's DMs, and decided to finish here. It's not beta read, and it was written mostly after I worked on stats homework, but it is something.


End file.
